I stood before the tall grey tower and looked at it with amazement. Whoever built this tower knew what they were doing.

The tower itself was round and it must have been almost one hundred meters tall with a diameter of around twenty meters. It was mainly built out of finely cut rectangular grey rocks that were completely smooth. I touched the surface of the rocks with my hands and was surprised by how warm it felt despite the coldness outside.

The base of the tower consisted of a platform with pillars surrounding it made of the same smooth stone but covered in complex markings that would be best described as runes. The pillars went up around the edges of the tower for a bit before the gradually blended into the tower walls, only for new pillars to form around the tower wall further up and the same pattern repeated up along the entirety of the tower wall.

A small staircase was cut out of the stone platform where the first pillars stood and at the end of the staircase stood the towers entrance. Above the entrance were several carvings of owls that felt so lifelike that for a second, I almost thought they were alive and staring right at me.

Beneath the carvings of the owls there was a pair of dark wooden doors with similar carvings adorning them. At least I think that there was supposed to be a pair of doors. I couldn’t be sure, as right now only one door still stood and next to it, where the other door had presumably stood, was just a large hole with some pieces of dark wood spread on the ground.

Looks like somebody forced their way inside here not too long ago. Hopefully whoever did this isn’t still here. Or if they are, I hope that they’re at least nice.

I climbed up the stairs and walked in. As soon as I passed the entrance it felt like the chilliness of the outside disappeared and my entire body felt warmer. But there was still a huge hole leading to the outside just behind me. I took a step back and suddenly I felt cold again. I stepped back inside and smiled.

Magic. Fricking magic. I love it.

I looked around the room I had entered. The base level of the tower wasn’t really anything special. There was a staircase in the middle of the room that spiralled upwards and the rest of the room was just a few pieces of furniture and tables. I looked them and the rest of the room over and saw no dust or anything like that. Either someone often lives in this tower or there’s some kind of magic that cleans this place. Considering that the tower is in the middle of a huge forest far away from civilization I have a hard time imagining somebody living here, so magic seems more likely. Of course, considering that there is magic, there’s bound to exist wizards who are complete hermits. That’s just a must for all fantasy worlds, I don’t care if they’re real or not.

I walked up to the staircase and started moving to the next floor. It was some kind of kitchen, filled with tables, a cooking area, and shelves filled with vegetables, bread, meat and all kinds of ingredients. There was a lot of it. Almost half of the floor was just shelves filled with food, but oddly enough none of it looked like it’d gone bad.

Deciding that it was okay because I was in an emergency situation, I took some vegetables and bread and promptly ate it. I wished I had a bag of some sort to take some with me. Hopefully I would find one in this tower.

I kept on exploring the rest of the lower floors of the tower, but I didn’t find anything that special. Most of the other floors were just filled with rows upon rows of books, nothing else. At this time, I was so tired that I had a hard time keeping my eyes open, so when I climbed the stairs and arrived on a floor with several rooms that had beds in them, all thoughts of exploring the tower was pushed to the back of my mind. I didn’t even care to find out if somebody else was in the tower right now. I just chose one of the rooms randomly, closed the door behind me and threw myself into one of the beds. I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.

It took some time for my tired mind to remember where I was when I woke up again. I was so tired last night that my brain had a hard time actually grasping the situation I was in. A good nights sleep had done me good though, as I felt in tip-top shape now.

After spending some time lying in bed and recalling the memories from the previous nights I yawned loudly and stood up to stretch my body.

I still wasn’t sure if there was anybody else in this tower, but with it looking like somebody might have broken in here not too long ago and me having spent the entire night here undisturbed I was leaning towards the tower being empty of anybody except me.

But it's better to be safe than sorry, so before I left the room, I carefully opened the door and glanced out to make sure nobody was there. Seeing nobody, I let out a relieved sigh and walked out of the room.

There didn’t seem to be any windows in the tower, so first of all I went downstairs to the first floor to check what time of day it was. Going up to where the ruined door was, I poked out my head past the boundary of whatever magic that kept the inside of the tower warm and dry and felt the moist air of the outside world against my skin. It looked like it had rained a little since I went to sleep. I’m glad reached the tower before that.

Passing the entrance entirely I descended the staircase and looked up at the sky. The entirety of the sky was covered by grey clouds, so I had no idea what time of day it was. I’m not sure at what time I went to sleep the night before either, so I had no way of knowing for how long I’d slept. Not that it mattered much. The important bit was that I didn’t feel tired anymore.

With that thought I entered the tower again and started ascending the stairs to explore more of the tower. But before that, I went back to the room that I slept in and closed the door behind me. I had something I wanted to try before I did anything else. After all, if it worked, I wouldn’t have to find a bag to carry things around in.

In ‘The Wayfarer’s Realm’ most players had an item called a ‘Bag of Holding’ that they used to store their items in. It was bound to a character and couldn’t be opened by others. Problem was that the larger variant of those bags that you undoubtedly wanted at max-level were crazy expensive, so most players had to farm gold for a while in order to buy one.

Luckily for me, Garlyn had another alternative. In the spatial magic spell-tree there was a spell called ‘Dimensional Storage’ that did basically the same thing and Garlyn had always used that instead of a bag of holding.

I was thinking that if Garlyn’s stats and spells translated into this place, then wouldn’t his own private dimensional storage also translate here? After all, a spatial mage’s dimensional storage was supposed to be bound to the mage’s soul according the spell’s flavour text.

That’s at least what I was hoping. With how long I’d been playing the game, I had gathered a lot of stuff in Garlyn’s storage. Having access to all of that would make a huge difference.

With that in mind I sat down in bed and closed my eyes. ‘Dimensional Storage’ was also one of the earlier spells you could learn from the spatial magic spell-tree and as you levelled the spell up you could increase the storage space. Much like ‘Chronal Shift’, the spell was supposed to be one of the easier spells to learn in that spell-tree and I was hoping I could learn it quickly because of that.

At first, I tried to think of how the spell might work. ‘Chronal Shift’ seemed to work when I spread my mana around my entire body and thought of needing more time. My current theory was that spells needed you to shape the mana in specific ways and also think of the right action in order to cast the spell. That would explain why ‘Chronal Shift’ was such an easy spell to learn. I didn’t have to shape the mana into anything special or move it in a special way. All I had to do was spread it around my entire body, which was ridiculously easy. But when I tried performing ‘Time stop’ I failed because I didn’t know what to do with the mana. I think the trick to that spell is spreading my mana around me in a sphere and then thinking about time stopping. Problem is that I have no idea how to do that. Right now, I can’t even get the mana to move outside of my body.

But that was a problem for another day. Right now, my goal was learning to use ‘Dimensional Storage’.

When you used the spell in the game your character would stretch out his hand and draw a line with his finger. From that line a small fissure would form where the character could then interact with their storage.

That sounds like I’d have to move the mana outside my body to open the fissure, which I don’t know how to do yet and I have no idea how long it might take to learn it, or if I even can learn it by myself.

But maybe I didn’t need to actually move my mana outside my mana for that spell? The characters would use their fingertips to draw the line that created the fissure, so maybe it was enough for me to just move the mana to my finger?

With my eyes still closed I stretched out my right hand and pointed my index finger at thin air. I then felt around for that warm feeling inside my body, just like I had done yesterday, and I found it immediately. Instead of spreading my mana around my body like last time however, I now tried willing it to only move towards my outstretched finger. I felt the mana move around in my body, starting from my chest and outwards. It didn’t move to my finger though. Not only my finger, at least. Just like yesterday, my mana tried spreading itself out around my entire body, although I think my right hand felt a bit warmer than the rest of my body.

I opened my eyes and sighed. I was hoping this was going to be as easy as performing ‘Chronal Shift’ had been, but that was apparently a no-go.

I closed my eyes and, after taking a deep breath, I tried again. Willing my mana into my right hand, I once again felt the mana spread itself out around my body, this time with my right hand feeling a tiny bit warmer.

I kept on repeating the process again and again and again. For every attempt I did, I felt how I came closer to achieving what I wanted.

After well over a hundred attempts I’d finally managed to get all the mana to gather just in my right hand and after almost a hundred more tries I’d learned how to control the mana enough to focus most of that mana at the top of my index finger. I tried focusing the mana in other parts of my body too, but I realized that I could only focus the mana to that extent in my right index finger. I guess it must work a bit like muscle memory, so if I want to focus the mana in other parts of my body, I'll have to train moving it there first, like I did now.

I would have expected using as much mana as I’d done training now would have drained whatever mana-supplies I had but, besides feeling really tired in my head from concentrating so hard for that long, I didn’t feel anything special.

That either meant that I had a lot of mana or what I did cost very little to no mana. That, or maybe you could just cast spells without limits in this world. I doubted that, however. Considering that I was in Granlyn’s body, the most likely answer was that I had a lot of mana. He was a max-levelled battle mage after all. He could cast the low-levelled versions of spells like ‘Chronal Shift’ and ’Dimensional Storage’ for hours without running out of mana.

Which, I realized, is probably exactly what I had been doing now. I wonder for exactly how long I'd been doing this. My plan was to explore the tower, but I had gotten so caught up in learning to cast ‘Dimensional Storage’ that I entirely forgot about that.

Well, it was time to test the fruits of my efforts. After that I could explore the rest of the tower.

I closed my eyes again and stretched out my right hand and my index finger. I then willed the mana inside my body into my finger and felt how the warmth moved from my chest, through my arm and hand, into the tip of my finger. I couldn’t get all of my mana into my finger, there was still some lingering mana left in the arm and hand, but the majority of it was focused in the finger.

I’d already considered what thoughts might be needed to cast the spell, and so when I drew a line in the air with my finger, I thought of splitting the air and reaching my special space, special to me and me alone.

I heard a sound like when a vacuum is formed and sucks air into it and with anticipation, I opened my eyes.

Hanging in the air in front of my right hand was a pitch-black tear in the air. I could barely stop myself from jumping up in excitement.

I stretched out my shaking hand to the void that had appeared right in front of it, and after calming down for a second, I put it in.

I saw my hand go into the black void and disappear, and I felt something. An indescribable feeling of reaching a pocket but knowing everything about that pocket. Its shape, its size, its age and its content. There was nothing I didn’t know about this pocket of mine, and I was exhilarated to find out that there were things inside of it. Things that I recognized as items from Garlyn’s storage.

But I was also disappointed. The size of the pocket wasn’t nearly as large as Garlyn’s was, and only some of the items from his storage seemed to be here. And mostly lower level items too. A bit of food, some potions and scrolls, a couple of weapons and pieces of clothing and some gold. The only thing that stood out was a ring. ‘The Interpreter’s Prize’. A rare ring that allowed you to understand most languages.

That’s…convenient. Everything else in here was just mostly the useless low-level junk Garlyn had in his storage, but this wasn't. it might not have been very useful in the game, however here it might be one of the most important items that i could get from Garlyn's old storage.

I'm not sure I want to think about the implications of this right now... And I won't. I've got more important things to do right now.

Although I only have a few of the items from Garlyn’s storage, I don’t think I’ve lost the rest of his items. It feels like my pocket has more space in it than I can see right now, I just can’t reach it. Maybe that means that I’m using the lowest-level variant of ‘Dimensional Storage’ right now, and when I learn to better use the spell, I can make the pocket bigger and perhaps get access to more of Garlyn’s old items? I hope so.

With that thought I closed the storage and stood up. This was a giving session, but I had postponed my original goal for a while now.

It was time to explore the rest of the tower.